by Sally Mason
Hasn’t that paid off in the past?
About as often as it has failed you, the voice of negativity assures her.
Think of how wrong she’d been about Tom Bennett, a sexually perverse little creep disguised in a Brooks Brothers suit.
How eagerly she had allowed herself to be wooed by him when she’d met him within her first months of arriving in New York.
A handsome young associate at the legal firm that handled the Blunt Agency’s business.
At first she’d asked herself why he would be interested in her, then she’d allowed herself to be swept away.
She was attractive in a severe way, with her black bob and her smart-girl glasses, and peeled free of the dark, almost mannish, suits she favored, her body was slender and well formed.
Gamine, Tom had called her.
Said she was sexy in a kind of Audrey Hepburnish way.
Which had delighted her—Breakfast at Tiffany’s had been her favorite movie as a teenager.
She’d soaked up its sophistication, swearing to herself that she, too, would be one of those chic Manhattan girls one day.
And so she had.
With her apartment in the Meat Packing District, a job at the hottest lit agency in Manhattan and a gorgeous husband-to-be.
She understands now that she’d been perfect for the Jekyll and Hyde that was Tom Bennett.
Her job had her traveling frequently: attending the book fairs and conferences that Jonas Blunt was too mighty to waste his time on.
Acting as his emissary and paying personal visits to the clutch of aging big name authors on Jonas’s books.
These crusty literary types didn’t make a huge amount of money for the agency, but they lent it a certain chic.
Meanwhile Jonas was able to party on both coasts with his celebrity clients: fashion models and actresses who wrote cookery, yoga and diet books that sold like crazy, made her boss wealthy and had him frequently splashed on the society pages.
And while she was away Tom had shed his suit and turned into something vile and filthy.
In their bed.
Eew.
As Jane crosses into Vermont her cell phone rings and she has to force herself not feel some pang of hope that it may be Tom.
She clears her throat when she sees it’s Jonas Blunt.
“Are you there yet?” he asks.
“I’m en route.”
“I’ve just had breakfast with Raynebeau Jones,” he says, casually dropping the name of Hollywood’s hottest young actress. “She feels she was born to play Suzie Ballinger and I think she’s right.”
Suzie, despite her sexual proclivities, is very smart, which makes the character memorable.
Raynebeau Jones is an airhead.
Jane says, “That’s interesting.”
“Very,” Jonas says. “I told her that we’re on the brink of signing Viola Usher and that we’d very shortly be in a position to negotiate the sale of the movie rights.”
“Isn’t that a little premature?”
“I thought you’d found her?”
“I’m following a lead.”
There’s a pause, then when Jonas speaks his voice is menacingly level.
“Okay, here’s how it’s going to go: you find Viola Usher and sign her and you’ll get a corner office with an agent sign on the door. Screw this up and you’re history. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Jonas,” Jane says, her voice breaking.
6
When Gordon, halfway into a bottle of his absent sister’s Chilean cabernet, responds to a knock at the front door and yanks it open to reveal Suzie Baldwin illuminated by the dim porch light, he yells, “Will you for heaven’s sake please just go away!”
He is about to slam the door when he sees this isn’t the spectral Suzie, but a young woman with bobbed black hair and glasses, who stares at him in shock.
“I’m terribly sorry if this is a bad time,” she says.
“No,” Gordon says, “my apologies. I thought you were some salesperson who has been bothering me. How may I help you?”
“You’re Gordon Rushworth?”
“Yes.”
“The author?”
“I am he,” Gordon says drawing himself up to his full and not inconsiderable height.
The woman sticks out a hand.
“My name’s Jane Cooper. I’m an agent with the Jonas Blunt Agency in New York.”
Gordon is suddenly very, very sober.
He submitted a copy of Too Long the Night to Jonas Blunt, of course.
But knowing the man’s reputation for rudeness and his scorn for unsolicited manuscripts, he had not been surprised when there was not a reply.
But here this woman is, in the flesh.
“You’re here about the book?” he says.
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, please come in,” he says stepping back and opening the door.
As she enters the living room, Gordon is suddenly aware of how squalid it must seem with its tatty furniture (somehow Bitsy’s good taste in décor does not extend to her own home) and the blanket and pillow folded up on the couch.
Gordon dumps the bedding on the floor and points to one of the chairs.
“Please, have a seat.”
The woman sits.
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
She hesitates, then says, “That would be nice. Thank you.”
He ducks into the kitchen, returns with a glass and pours some wine into it.
Handing her the drink he says, “So, how did you find me?”
“A woman named Grace at the diner directed me to you.”
“She has a big mouth,” he says and then quickly adds, “And an even bigger heart.”
“I stopped in to ask for information and ended eating too many of her really addictive molasses cookies.”
“Joe Froggers they’re called around here. I grew up on them.”
“So you’re from East Devon?”
“Born and bred, but I left as a teenager. I’m just back for a short sabbatical.”
Gordon feels he has paid lip service to small talk and is bursting to get to the subject at hand.
They must want to represent him if this woman has traveled all the way from New York City.
“So, you liked Too Long the Night?” he asks.
She stares at him blankly as she lowers her wine glass.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t understand.”
“My novel?”
She shakes her head.
“Oh, God, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“You said you were here about the book?”
“I am here about a book, yes. Ivy, by Viola Usher.”
Gordon feels as if he’s caught in middle of a multiple vehicle wreck, getting hammered from all sides.
His disappointment at Jane Cooper not knowing about Too Long the Night is trumped by the terrifying realization that somehow she has broken his cover.
That she knows he’s responsible for that bit of sleazy trash.
That he’s Viola Usher.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about,” he says, his voice sounding strangled.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Rushworth. Have you heard of Ivy?”
He looks down his patrician nose at her.
“I have not.”
“It’s a very sexy romance, self-published, written by an unknown author who we’re desperate to sign.”
“I see, and just what does this have to do with me?”
“Oh, nothing directly.”
He relaxes enough to gulp the rest of his wine.
“There’s a bridge on the cover of the book that I have traced to East Devon. I thought that Viola Usher may live here. Grace didn’t know her, but she said you’re an author and I thought that perhaps you may have some idea of where I can find Ms. Usher. A long shot I know.”
“Yes,” he says. “A very long shot.”
He’s about to shoo the woman out when he sees an opportunity here.
“You say this book is called Ivy?”
“Yes.”
“Do you perhaps have a copy with you?”
“Only on my iPad. It’s not available in print.”
“Ah, I’ll have no truck with those gadgets,” he says.
A lie of course, he has a Kindle hidden in the suitcase he’s living out of.
“Did you want to read it?” Jane Copper asks.
“Well, it seems a shame that you’ve driven all the way out here on a wild goose chase. I thought that if I read it, then perhaps I may be able to help you find the author, if she’s a local.”
“I could leave you my iPad,” she says, digging in the bag that she dumped on the floor beside her chair.
“No, no,” he says, holding up a hand. “I’m a real Luddite, but I understand that I can download a copy and read it on my laptop?”
“That’s true.”
“I’ll do it right away and read it tonight. We can meet at Grace’s for brunch and I’ll report back.”
“I’d be really grateful, Mr. Rushworth.”
“Gordon, please.”
“Gordon.”
He looks at her.
“But I’m afraid there is going to be a little quid pro quo.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll read your novel if you read mine.”
She smiles at him.
“I suppose that’s fair. I’ll take it back with me to New York.”
He wags a finger at her.
“I was thinking that you’d make a start tonight, and you could give me your impressions at brunch.”
“I am a little tired.”
“Would it be unreasonable for you to read, say, five or six chapters?”
He digs into his suitcase and withdraws a spiral bound wad of paper as fat as a telephone directory.
He sees her eyes widen.
“That’s quite some book,” she says.
“I hope you still feel that way when you’ve read it.”
She takes the manuscript and dumps it into her shoulder bag, which hangs heavy when she stands.
“Well, let me get across to my room at the Sugar Maple Inn.”
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“I hope that’s a joke?”
“Only partly,” he says, with a smile.
Jane Cooper drags her mouth down in reply and he shows her out, a subtle hint of her perfume left in the air.
Gordon sloshes wine into his glass and takes stock.
A bizarre situation, of course.
And one fraught with peril.
But surely he can turn it to his advantage?
He empties the bottle and falls asleep on the couch, convinced that he can.
7
Jane Cooper, propped up in a lumpy bed at the Sugar Maple Inn reading Gordon Rushworth’s atrocious novel, sees a cockroach scuttling across the wooden floor toward her suitcase.
Before she can stop herself she hurls the bulky manuscript and squashes the roach.
About all the book is good for.
Jane, dressed in a T-shirt and sweats, gets out of bed and, using a Kleenex, her mouth making a little moue of distaste, cleans the splattered bug from the back of the manuscript.
She flushes the Kleenex away, washes her hands and returns to the bed, leaving the manuscript lying on the floor.
No way in hell is she ever going to read another word of that tome.
It is pretentious, ridiculously over-written and stultifyingly boring.
To say the characters are made of cardboard would be to suggest they have dimension.
What is she going to say to Gordon Rushworth in the morning?
She’ll get him to go first, she decides.
Tell her what he has gleaned from reading Ivy.
If he’s helpful to her—and, hearing Jonas’s cool voice on the phone earlier, prays that he will be—she’ll leave him with the impression that she likes his book and will do her best to get her boss to like it too.
If Rushworth arrives with nothing in the way of help, she’ll tell him that his book is just not her thing, leave it on the table and head on back to New York
What the hell, if he can’t help her she’ll be out of a job anyway.
Despite her very distressing day, she feels a twinge of compassion for Gordon Rushworth.
He is clearly an intelligent man, if a little pompous.
And not bad looking, in an appealingly rumpled, bookish way.
But he’s monumentally untalented as a writer and she can only imagine how painful it will be for him to have spent a decade on this book, only to face its inevitable rejection.
Well, he can always self-publish.
There may be a few suckers out there prepared to part with a couple of dollars to read his drivel.
But a man like Gordon Rushworth would never be satisfied with that.
He wants his genius to be acknowledged by New York City publishers and the coterie of reviewers who write for the major newspapers and magazines.
He didn’t say, but Jane is certain he is an academic of some sort, hence the sabbatical.
Probably teaches English Literature.
Well, better that he forget his ambitions to be a writer and return to whatever crusty Ivy League college he is a faculty member of.
Jane, almost drifting off to sleep, sits bolt upright and, despite her earlier resolve never to touch Gordon Rushworth’s book again, she stretches across and snags the manuscript and opens it on her knees, not even worrying that she may be getting roach juice on her sweats.
She skims through the book, zooming along with Lance Prescott as he watches his childhood sweetheart waste away and die (this tragedy presented with all the emotional insight of a Hallmark card, bogged down with pages of Lance pondering the meaning of life and death), fights off the high school bullies who torment the young intellectual, and finally makes his way to an East Coast college where he forgets about love and dedicates himself to (in his words) “the life of the mind.”
Jane powers up her iPad and opens Ivy, clicking through the pages, until she bursts out laughing.
The coincidences are too numerous to ignore.
The small Vermont town.
The bullies.
The drunken stepfather.
The East Coast college.
Sarah Oatman, the tragic, Salinger-sprouting, ingénue of Too Long the Night lives on as Suzie Ballinger, the horny, Salinger-sprouting heroine of Ivy.
“Thank you, God,” Jane says, slumping down onto the bed with her eyes closed and a stupid grin plastered across her face.
She has found Viola Usher.
And she’s having brunch with him tomorrow.
8
Bitsy Rushworth loves her brother, but she doesn’t like him.
A contradiction that she mulls over while driving her Volvo through the breathtaking Fall landscape, leaving East Devon behind, making her usual Saturday morning pilgrimage to a farm forty minutes from her home.
A farm that houses the Quant Foundation, headed by Daniel Quant, a man who has been responsible for a radical shift in Bitsy’s thinking over the last year.
It’s Quant’s philosophy that enables her to embrace her seemingly contradictory feelings for Gordon.
“Be thankful for the challenge of this contradiction,” Quant had told her in a one-on-one counseling session shortly after Gordon had dumped himself on her. “You have attracted this relationship with your brother, which means it is precisely what you need in your life at this moment. It is fueling your own evolution.”
“And what will happen when I’ve evolved enough?” she asked.
Quant had laughed, his piercing blue eyes disappearing into a ripple of wrinkles.
“Then you’ll be able to tell the freeloading S.O.B to shape up or ship out.”
Just one of the contradictions of Quant himself, that he could make solemn pronouncements one moment and
then sound like a longshoreman the next.
Part of his appeal, along with his tanned skin and graying hair worn cropped close to his skull.
It was terribly clichéd, Bitsy knew, to fall for a self-help guru, but she’d fallen for Daniel Quant.
And fallen hard.
Since the end of her very short-lived marriage nearly twenty years ago—when her husband, an academic at a minor East Coast college, had burst out of the closet what could Bitsy do but gather her few belongings and what was left of her pride and slink back to East Devon?—she has experimented with everything from yoga, to transcendental meditation to holotropic breath work.
No New Agey event has taken place within a hundred mile radius of East Devon without Bitsy gassing up the old Volvo and hitting the self-realization trail.
But the only realization she’d arrived at was that she was alone and lonely and probably always would be.
Then she’d picked up a flier at a health food store in Brattleboro, advertising a talk by Daniel Quant of the Quant Foundation.
Located on a farm close to East Devon.
Bitsy had seen too many shaggy, neo-hippie farming communes (topless lactating women with hairy armpits; feral children; weed-smoking men sorely in need of dentistry) to be interested, then she spotted the couple who were handing out the fliers.
They were clean and trim in tasteful summer wear.
He had neatly cropped hair and (when he smiled and handed a flier to a passerby) good teeth. She was pretty enough to play a housewife in a suburban sit-com.
No, not typical at all.
So Bitsy had driven across to the farm the next Saturday and had been pleasantly surprised.
The farm was not a commune, home only to Daniel Quant and a few of his personal assistants.
Assistants of both genders and a variety of ages, which seemed to dispel the horny guru cliché.
Growing from the side of the old brick farmhouse was a new two-story glass and wood structure that housed the Foundation.
It was in a hall in this building that Daniel Quant spoke to an audience of around a hundred people.
What he said wasn’t all that revelatory, a synthesis of various Eastern-flavored philosophies all tied together by the string theory, but it was the way he said it that impressed Bitsy.